


Yours

by ElleAustin



Category: PartridgeVerse, mine - Fandom, sally partridge
Genre: Drug Use, Eating Disorder, F/M, M/M, Mine by Sally Partridge, Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-03-30 10:17:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13949484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElleAustin/pseuds/ElleAustin
Summary: Fin is dead and Kayla is unable to move on.Standing on the Unnamed Road in the middle of nowhere, Kayla is confronted by a strange boy who for a moment, breaks through her pain under the shadow of the Black Mountain.Kayla has to deal. Fin pushes her constantly to take that final step, and letting go has never been so easy when you realize you were the villain in your own love story





	1. The Unnamed Road

**Author's Note:**

> This humble scribbling is a continuation of Finley and Kayla's story based on the beautiful novel, Mine by Sally Partridge.  
> "I like have to believe their is a happy ending for Kayla."  
> obvi random quote

**Rondebosch, Monday**

Lorenda stays in the bathroom, watching me from the toilet seat as I face the mirror.  
My hand shakes as I grip the brush and push it through my knotted hair. My wrists ache deep into the bone. The doctor said it͛ was the muscle that͛ had lost cohesion, which was his way of saying 'Trying to kill yourself was stupid.'  
The brush drops from my hand clattering against the porcelain basin. The fall is deafening.  
Lorenda sighs but she catches herself. Doctors͛ orders again. No sighs, no outward expression of emotion except loving kindness.  
“Do you want me to finish,” she asks softly. Lorenda is considerate now.  
I nod and regret it instantly. My head wobbles more than it should and I can't stop. I do head wobbles now.  
Lorenda soothes my stubborn thick hair into a bun.  
I shuffle to the bed across the floor, my legs are an old lady's legs.  
I take the edge of the bed, gripping covers to steady myself from the dizzing merry go round.  
I focus on a spot against the bland wall.  
My wall is a white void, my floor is a grey sea, the colour scrubbed away while I was in hospital by an overzealous Jerome. My sketches are in a box in Lorenda’s cupboard along with my board. She couldn’t bear to throw them away. She tells me that she's kept them for when I'm better but she never mentions the board.    
She's hiding things from me to keep me safe. Lorenda wants me safe now.   
Lorenda and Jerome cleared the room six months ago as if to erase his existence  
I  try to remember what pink looked like, what it felt like to see me in the mirror and not a hollow faded sheet of crumpled human paper .  
She and Jerome are talking about me again. They must be because everything has gone quiet.  
I get up slowly, shuffling my feet on the grey tile. The dizziness washes over me pulling my head to the side but I ride it out until the sparks in front of my eyes disappear. I don’t have to go far to hear the conversation.  
"She’s getting better, even the doctor said so."  
“The doctor said she would get better if she stayed on her medication. And she’s _forgot_ to take it twice so far, and both times was bad.”  
Lorenda doesn’t say anything back.  
I turn slowly, old lady shuffling back to my bed.  
“Fin’s death..”  
The dizziness comes back. My stomach starts to ache. I lift my hands to my face, my cheeks are wet.  
Jerome finds me standing against the wall crying, stooped over with pain. Lorenda holds me close against her as she walks me to my bed.  
I sink into the pillow and he speaks.   
Fin talks to me again.  
“You cheated on me Kayla, you cheated on me, and now I’m dead. You killed me, but I forgive you. We can be together. Everything will be okay. You can still save me.”  
I hear him when the medication wears off. I haven’t told the Doctor.  
In the X-men comics, Scott Summers is trapped in the Bug Room – a room where giant bugs gnaw at him until there’s nothing left. Then the Big Bad brings him back from the dead and it starts again.  
The pale walls close in around me. Is this my Bug room?  
I fall asleep to Fin whispering my name like a prayer.

 

**Rondebosch, Tuesday**  
The plate of eggs is greasy. I let it slide down my throat. I need to eat first so the tablets don't make me sick. The chair across from me is empty, Fin hasn’t said good morning to me yet.   
Lorenda drops the pills in front of me and just stands there, holding the pill dispenser like she holds the bible at church. She stands close by as I take them.   
It looks like I won't be talking to Fin today.   
I promised Lorenda I’d stick to my regimen. It’s the only way to get her to stop looking at me like she’s on the verge of tears.   
Jerome sits down across from me while Lorenda finally stops hovering,  sits down. She clasps my hand. Lorenda cares. Lorenda saves.    
“Kayla we have a surprise for you."  
She pauses a second, and I think she's waiting for me to get all excited about her announcement but I feel nothing. My stomach whirls as the greasy eggs hits    
I don't feel anything when her smile fades and she steadies herself. Like she's jumping off a cliff or something.   
"Jerome’s uncle Blandon has given us a place to stay on a farm he works at. It’s away from distractions and it’s quiet."  
Jerome just nods as he lets my mother do all the selling.  
“It’s out of Cape Town but I think the change of scenery will be good for you. Dr Chodhai agrees that it might be therapeutic, but you will have to call her once a week. And the pharmacy in the town will fill your prescriptions. ”  
I start on the bacon, chewing it slowly, making a show of it.  I smile. They need to see me eat so I can bide my time and see Fin again.  
“Yes,” I say, thinking about the future for the first time since the hospital.

 

**Wednesday, Unnamed Road off the R328**

The sun bleached house waits on a hill overlooking a long winding road.  
Blandon calls it a _koppie_. Lorenda nods and laughs as she sees the house from the dusty side road we had to climb from the Unnamed Road.  
Google Maps calls it the unnamed road. I’m beginning to think that Google Maps has a sense of humour, travelling down the unnamed road to and unnamed destination.  
I played navigator, it’s been the only time I’ve been allowed to touch a phone in 6 months since I got out of the facility. The route took us through some sad karoo town, where we picked up, Jerome's sweaty uncle Blandon, who diverted us onto this dusty tarred road, and then to stony path that lead to the house on the _koppie_.  
The path is barely wide enough for the car, and the white thorny bushes scraping the side make my bones ache. A million nails against the chalkboard driving with us down the path. Lorenda grips  the steering wheel a bit tighter leaving impressions in the fake leather.  
"What's that," she says, as he was an open field with a single white building standing amongst the stones and shrubs.  It's whitewashed walls shine in the sun, and the corrugated iron roof gleams.   
“That’s the _dood’s huis_.”  
Lorenda manages a reply. It is so quiet I don’t hear it.  
“Well yes, that’s where they stored the dead before a burial in this area. But they don’t do that anymore.”  He wipes at his face with a large oversized rag that he pulls from a pocket.  
Before Lorenda can say anything I point out the farm house ahead.  
Blandon directs Lorenda to park.  
The blast of hot air from the opening door pushes me back against the seat. This place seems immune to Winter.  
Lorenda disappears into the farm house.  
I push the car door closed, Lorenda and Blandon's voice carry on the still air, weaving through the empty chicken coops and rusted gates.  
The house is old. Through the ancient white wash, red brick lay exposed. The thatch roof is a deep black against the white of the plaster.  
Blandon and Lorenda talk about the house, as they fumble around with the heavy back door.  
I wander after them like an apparition floating behind them. Dr Chodhai adjusted my pills again so instead of the old lady, I am now the ghost floating detached in a faded world.  
There are times I wonder if the pills can fix the cracks. Finn stands by the back door, bows deeply, flourishing his hand like a those girls on the British game shows.   
" _My dear_ , here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that," he says with a fake british accent.  
The kitchen is something out of a magazine. A large oak table fills the kitchen, the surface gouged with deep furrows, to form a faded etching that looks like two people on a wagon journeying along a winding road.  
I run my hand over the etching, tracing the road from one end of the table to another. The road is dusty and in need of cleaning.  
Parlor. Bedroom. Veranda. The words echo around the house as Blandon shows Lorenda the rooms. She obliges with a loud:"Oh my goodness" or "Wow"  
I  sit at the large table running my hands over the etchings again staring at the two figures on the wagon.  
Fin sits across the table from me. “I don’t think this is the place for you babe."  
He lights a cigarette and exhales filling the kitchen with curling smoke.  
I close my eyes. Settling my fingers in the hard grooves of the solid wood, I wait until he goes away. 


	2. The White Hat

**Monday, The Unnamed Road**

**S.e.b.**

Seb stands at the stop street watching the snake cross the road. The snake moves across the road with no sense of urgency until it rolls from the crumbling black tar into the red stained ditch.   
His white linen suit and fedora shines in the morning sun. He carefully adjusts the jacket so it settles on his shoulders careful not to drop the snaking wires of his earphones. 

Shouldering his pack, Seb makes his way down the road, the riotous cacophony of piano and melody fighting for control, rolls over his skin into his bones and replaces his DNA with the minor fall and the major lift.  
The mornings were his, Lucille had been pushing him to take the morning shift but he had to do _the walk_. The ritual was comforting. The _Swartberg_ Mountains just sat there watching him, all attempts to convince the mountain to reveal it's secrets had been met with silence. He hoped that it enjoyed the show.   
He thumbed the volume and the only white linen suited person on the Unnamed Road began his strutting dance.

_"Passionate bright young things, takes him away to war (don't fake it)."_

Seb, mid spin, spotted the figure walking down the Unnamed road, a mirage in a dark hoodie and jeans shuffling along like an old lady without a walking stick.  The faded figure shuffled closer her feet catching at the rough tar.

The hoodie is pushed back, the ghost of a girl, her thick brown hair tied back revealing an open face with dark eyes, stared intently at him.   
Her lips are cracked, he thought.  
Why are her lips cracked?  
She must be thirsty.  
Perhaps if I tossed her some water she will disappear.  
Seb thought in straight lines, it was the only way he could deal with the world. 

The throw was dead on, hitting the Mirage Girl on the hip.  
“OW! What the actual fuck?!” said the Mirage Girl.  Seb ran from his side of the road grabbed the bottle, putting it down in the centre of road, on the white line.

Mirage girl squints at him, Seb stands still and points at the water.

“You looked thirsty,” he says.

“I don’t care” says the girl and continues down the road.

Seb picks up the bottle of water and tosses it again at her

“OW! Stop that!”

Again Seb retrieves the bottle and puts it in the middle of the road.

The mirage girl watches him again. “I don’t want ANY WATER!” she shouts at him.  
Maybe she'll get so angry, she'll just explode.  
She moves away faster but Seb catches her on the hip again. The scream is deafening, as she runs at him.  
“WHAT!” She grabs the water and throws it back at him, hitting in the stomach a glancing blow.  
Good aim, no power, he thought.  
Mirage girl is shorter than him, and she is:  
Beautiful is the cliché word. A generic word that fills up space for a word that cannot describe something life changing. Seb believes there is a better word than beautiful, and the way to find it was to make sure he could drink her in with every sense. But she needed to be alive for him to do that and this mirage would soon disappear. Like the others.  
Seb reaches into his pack, pulls out another water and holds it out to the mirage girl.  
She stares at him, then stomps over, grabs it, rips the top off like she was wringing a neck and drinks deeply, finishing the entire bottle.    
She hands the empty bottle to a grinning Seb. He hands over another bottle, and for a minute she stares at him like she actually recognizes him!  
“You are real," he says dropping his hand from the bottle, he pops in the ear phone, turns his back, heading down the waiting Unnamed Road in the shadow of the laughing _Swartberg._

_"ooooooooh, Who'll love Aladdin Sane"_

   
**Monday, the Unnamed Road onto the Swartberg Pass**

  
The pain on my hip fades away as the strange boy dressed in white walks down the road.  
I shuffle down the gnarly tarred road till I reach the T junction. The stop sign is pitted, turned rusty red, like dried blood. Someone told me that despair was like being stranded on an ocean of darkness with no light to find your way, so you just stay where you are, your tears adding to the depths of the unending sea, trapping you forever until you realize there is a way out. Beneath you into the dark waters.   
I reckon that’s crap, despair is a million holes pushed through you until there’s nothing left but tatters that blow away in the onslaught of a meaningless dull life.  
I throw up heaving up the water and all my trauma against the stop sign. I stuff two fingers down my throat, pushing against my tongue until I heave again. I want to be empty and hollow so the bad stuff can’t touch me inside anymore. I want to be gone from this world.  
The heat is a hammer blow casting shimmers on the red rocks and scrawny plants hiding against the red. Blandon said it was the most dangerous pass in the world, so dangerous half of it is untarred for cars to travel across but a safe half an hour shuffle with legs that belong to a grandma.    
Each step up the pass is a march to the gallows. I imagine everyone lining the road reminding me of the horrible things I’ve done.  
Craig is first, looking at me like he did at the swimming pool. “You were my girl Kayla. We could have had something special if you had just worked harder to keep us together.”  
I ignore him. The pain in my chest helps block him out. But I can’t block out Sebastian Brown.  
He walks ahead of me, his hands high, an MC urging on the crowd.  
“Move aside people, dead girl walking. She atones for the sins of sluttiness and admits to being a needy emotional little bitch.”  
 “Fuck you!”  The words fade against the mountain, until the faint ‘you’ is that all returns to me.  
“Hey skater girl, your long fall is over there” he says pointing to the plain wooden table and bench overlooking the highest point of the pass. I don’t see the drop, I ignore the shouting behind me and focus on the thing that sits on the table.  
A bottle of water.  
The bench is old and gnarled, patched and repaired with pieces of wood. I run my hand over the surface of the wooden table feeling every gouge and dip on its surface. Every part of it is covered with names, numbers and overflowing with words.  
“I was here” is popular.  
Towards the top someone had etched in long deep deliberate grooves:  
                                          _“I fight for the person I was, before._  
_I fight for the person I will be, after.”_  
The water is warm - I don’t care. I finish it seconds.  
Finn takes the seat across from me. He’s not real, Fin's been gone for 18 months.   
That is the first time I've let time back in again. But it doesn't matter. He is my before and after.  
The wind blows sweetly carrying the smell of the purple flowers below.  
“Kayla,” he says it too me softly, like he did on that night together in the warm dark, gasping for breath as we lie in each other’s arms.  
The edge of the pass calls to me and it’s asking for a step.  
Just. One. Step

 


	3. The Deck

**Monday, The Unnamed Road by the Stairs**

**Kayla**

Blandon stops the bakkie by the stairs. I gasp at the jolt and the ratchett of the hand break.  I lean against the heavy door of the double cab pushing it with all my strength. Blandon watches me for a bit before hopping out and opening the door for me. 

He helps me out with little expression on his tanned face.

"Thank you," I mumble. 

"Not a problem, miss. Not a problem."  I lean on him, as I limp towards the stairs and the white pitted railing.  
He stands back watching me.   
I am a mess. My legs are quivering, as I take the first stair.  Eating has never been a priority when everything takes like ash in my mouth, so my clothes are loose and two sizes to big.    
The wasting away diet - you too could look like me too, just kill your boyfriend.   
The second, third and fourth steps are easy. But it's the object sitting on the tenth, the last step, that drives me up. Curiosity drives me on.  
I take the fruit in my hands sitting heavily on the top step.  
Blandon looks on from the road.    
"What's that ?," he asks.  
I hold up the pomegranate.  I watch with a tinge of jealousy as the 50 year old man bounds up the stairs.   
"That's a nice one." I rub my hands over the leathery skin, moving it from hand to hand taking comfort in the weight of it.   
"Can you open it." My voice is a whisper. 

Blandon receives it like a egg, gently creating a tear with a thumbnail, then sliding a finger until he has the leverage. He hands me the torn fruit, bright red pips peaking through the rend.  
"Enjoy, it looks like a lekker one." He turns round and walks down the stairs but a stray thought catches him and he turns around.   
"Don't forget to throw a few pips on the ground."   
"Why?" I ask.   
"For the dead, miss. We honour the dead with the gift of pomegranate seeds."  
He hoists himself into the bakkie with ease. I limp towards the back stoep, the nattering of a flying insect following me to a chair leaning against a white wall in the shade of the farm house.  
I can see the dead house from across the field and the figure standing in front of it, sitting on a chair in the shade of it. 

Fin stares back at me from across the divide. Watching me from his chair. His face a mask of blood dripping into the dusk. He stands casting long shadows, flicking the cigarette into the rock strewn field as he moves in my direction. 

Each steps he takes towards me, is a pain in my chest. My stomach heaves and the last of the water I drank turns the dust into red mud.  

Fin runs, crunching through the scrub, dashing over loose rocks. My heart clenches and I can't breath.  
He's coming for me. For my cheater's heart. I heard the bakkie on the hill and I waited. I waited for it too stop.  I couldn't take that that step. He's coming for me.  

The pomegranate.  
I pull at it, trying to tear junks from it but the skin is tough. He kicks a rock towards me, it skips against the wall. I sink my teeth into it's flesh and I'm overwhelmed by a burst of red sweetness, followed by a sharp tart note that makes think of a slight skid after a perfect ollie on a soaked road. I spit the seeds on the floor one, two, three as the pain takes away the last of my breath, and I hear the footsteps stop before my bowed head.   
I try to breath but the pain is so sharp like razors blade cuts on the ribs.  

  
I don't want to look.   
I don't want to look.   
I don't want to look. 

_"You're okay."_

I look up, my breath ragged, my hands stained red.  
A tall man with red hair stares back at me, a smile on his face, his eyes blue and green dancing in the sunlight. He adjusts the white linen suit turns around and walks back towards the dead house and into the heat haze beyond.  I lift the pomegranate to my lips. I can feel the pips pop as I crush them in my mouth. The cool sweet juices fill me as relief washes away the pain.   
Lorenda finds me some time later, asleep against the wall, seeds strewn around me.  

She doesn't look happy, but her supportive parent expression is pasted on her face. It slips when she sees my pills lying in mud.   
"I'm sorry. I don't know how to not be sad."   
Lorenda doesn't even shake her head, which is the universal sign of parental concern. She hugs me instead, holding me close. She's so warm.  
"This was our last chance Kayla, our last chance." 

 

 

**Monday, The Farmhouse**

**Kayla**

Lorenda stokes the coal stove.  The heat seeps through the kitchen wrapping around me, warming my cold blue fingers.  This is what a kitchen should feel like. Wooden rafters with garlic swaying from the hooks in the dark brown beams as the steam curls into the rafters from coffee brewed on the dark stove top, served in enamel cup. It feels like it was before we moved to Cape Town.    
The kitchen reminds me of an anime I watched with Finn, in the hours we snatched when Lorenda and Jerome were out.   
Howl's Movie Castle was about this girl Sophie who cursed by a witch. Sophie ran away into the desolate Wastes to find a the might magician Howl. But Sophie couldn't tell him that she was young and cursed because the witch's spell prevented her from saying anything about the curse. She asked for work instead, and Howl on their first meeting, cooked them breakfast in a kitchen that looked like this. I used to dream about that kitchen and the breakfast Howl cobbled together for him, Sophie and Mako, talking about plans they had that day.   
Why is anime food so much better than food in real life?   
"KAYLA!"   
"Yes!"  
We look at each other like we are the others burden.  She looks away first, sipping her coffee.   
 "How long have you been skipping your pills."  
I don't answer. The truth is I don't know. I vividly remember taking them, but I would find pills in the lining of my pillow case, or in my slippers.   
She lays the pills on the table next to my coffee.    
 "Please take these. "  
I take each one, chasing it down with the coffee.    
"Too easy Kayla, you should have given her a fight." Finn sits across from me. It's my Finn, not the harsh presence from the Deadhouse, but the lean-in to, kissing me till I can't breathe Finn.   
The last pill sticks in my throat, I resist the urge to cough it up.    
 "Good girl." Before I would have spat at Lorenda.  I would have grind my teeth and thrown a plate. The house would have been dissolved by the acid I would have spat from my lips. I would have run to my room, slamming the door until that Jerome would have looked away from the television and said: "Hey!". In that way that makes him seem like he's involved but secretly, he couldn't give a shit. I would have cried and cried salty tears enough to fill an ocean. Confessing to my diary and wondering why I was so unloved and unwanted, why I could never be the good girl.   
"Let's go out for an early supper. Ok?" Lorenda smiles at me as if everything is okay.   
"Yes." I answer. She leans in but stops herself, taking the cup instead.   
Only good girls get hugs and kisses. 

 

 


End file.
